“”... Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword and; also the women and little ones…. every male and every woman that has lain with a male you shall utterly destroy.” (Judges 21:10-12)

“This is what the Lord says: Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass .... And Saul ... utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.” (1 Samuel 15:3,7-8)

“The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their women with child ripped open.” (Hosea 13:16)”

“Most of the Israelites did not come from outside Canaan - they emerged from within it. There was no mass Exodus from Egypt…no violent conquest of Canaan. The early Israelites were - irony of ironies - themselves originally Canaanites!

The conquest of Canaan by Joshua could not have happened [as] described in the Bible. Most of the towns…either weren’t inhabited, didn’t exist or were conquered at wildly different times.” —Finkelstein and Silberman

I pulled out those quotes years ago in a discussion with some very Orthodox Jews. “If we found an Amelekite baby girl would you say a broucha and joyfully take your chance to obey a positive commandment or would you wimp out and let her live?”

Not one of them - and they included some real Black Hats - was ready to man up and smash its little skull.

I pulled out those quotes years ago in a discussion with some very Orthodox Jews. “If we found an Amelekite baby girl would you say a broucha and joyfully take your chance to obey a positive commandment or would you wimp out and let her live?”

Not one of them - and they included some real Black Hats - was ready to man up and smash its little skull.

That is exactly the response I would expect. Then the question becomes what part or parts of the Torah and Tanakh do they accept and why? Why do they accept some of the “words of god” and not others and what gives them the power to edit “god’s words”? When it comes right down to it no one seems to believe in the Torah and Tanakh. Furthermore what is practiced as “Judaism” has almost zero relation to what is in these canonized books. What we see as Judaism today is a disjointed, hodgepodge of cultural practices that developed long after the canonized scriptures were written in the 7th Century BC. Nothing wrong with that at all but why revere the Torah and Tanakh when it has basically been totally discarded. It as is if they are saying, “These are the words of god but we do not believe any of it.” OK then what do they believe and why? Pure Judaism, if it ever really existed which is doubtful, ceased to exist centuries ago. This is one of the reasons I left the religion of my youth. The “unchangeable word of god” was changed at every whim and political gust. It rapidly became evident that religion is merely a tool to control humans that has gone very wrong. To the religious I say, “I prefer the truth thanks.”

“Most of the Israelites did not come from outside Canaan - they emerged from within it. There was no mass Exodus from Egypt…no violent conquest of Canaan. The early Israelites were - irony of ironies - themselves originally Canaanites!

The conquest of Canaan by Joshua could not have happened [as] described in the Bible. Most of the towns…either weren’t inhabited, didn’t exist or were conquered at wildly different times.” —Finkelstein and Silberman